Automatic Designation of XBRL Taxonomy Tags
The embodiments described herein generally relate to new and alternate systems and methods to associate XBRL tags with financial data. A business user creates a design template that can be used one or more times to create an instance of an XBRL document. A user can select a user interface element to have a system automatically map the XBRL taxonomy tags with portions of financial information. Upon selecting the user interface element, the system determines the best matches for the financial information and the XBRL taxonomy. The matches are recorded or stored in the design template.
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Many organizations and government institutions are requiring the reporting of financial data using an electronic format. One format that has become increasingly popular among these organizations and government institutions is eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). To create a XBRL document for submission to an organization, a business must match an XBRL taxonomy with the source data, then generate the required output document from the source data and the taxonomy. The taxonomy is a definition of the information and relationships between the information needed in the required output. To create the required output, the business matches XBRL tags in the taxonomy with information in the business' accounting or other financial data. Upon matching the tags with the financial data, an XBRL document can be created with the financial information
Unfortunately, the process of matching the XBRL tags with financial information is difficult. Generally, businesses must complete the process by assigning manually the XBRL tag to a portion of financial data in some rudimentary way, typically in a software program that may or may not have been designed for this purpose, for example, a spreadsheet program. In more difficult situations, the business user must manipulate the XBRL documents themselves to create the appropriate match, which is a time consuming and tedious process because XBRL documents were designed to be processed by computers and not manually edited.
The process of matching the XBRL tags becomes extremely difficult if there are numerous XBRL tags and many different portions of financial data that require review. Further, the process is more complicated when the business user must complete the process over and over for each subsequent reporting of the financial data, for example, for reporting each month the balance sheet report. The reporting of the XBRL documents becomes prohibitively difficult as the number of data items and frequency of reporting increases. As more and more entities mandate the use of these machine-readable formats, such as XBRL, for financial reporting, software will have to increasingly perform these operations for the user.
SUMMARYThe embodiments described herein generally relate to new and alternate systems and methods to associate taxonomy tags with data for the purpose of generating an instance document in a machine-readable format, for example, XBRL. In one embodiment, a business user creates a design template that can be used one or more times to create an instance of an XBRL document. In creating the design template, a user, in embodiments, must associate or map XBRL taxonomy tags with portions of a general ledger, other financial information, business information, or other information, designated as “Rows” in this embodiment. A system automatically matches the taxonomy tags with the portions of financial information. The matches can be recorded or stored in the design template for later and repeated use by the system.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.
This disclosure will now more fully describe some embodiments with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which only some of the possible embodiments are shown. Other aspects may be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will convey the scope of the possible embodiments to those skilled in the art.
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to new and alternate methods and systems for automatically mapping taxonomy tags with data. In embodiments, the taxonomy is an XBRL taxonomy and the data is financial data. In other embodiments, the taxonomy is another type of machine-readable format and the data is another form of data. To create an XBRL document, also referred to as an XBRL instance document, a business creates a mapping between an XBRL taxonomy and the business' financial or other information. An XBRL taxonomy is a set of data that describes the contents of the XBRL instance document and the relationships between the contents of the XBRL instance document. An XBRL taxonomy may be defined by a third-party organization desiring and using the XBRL instance document. In this way, the third-party organization can define the type and format of the information needed. In other embodiments, the XBRL taxonomy is created or modified by the business sending the information. In this way, the business can adapt the XBRL document to the business' existing accounting or reporting systems. XBRL taxonomies can be defined in terms of other taxonomies, providing for compound taxonomies.
The XBRL instance document is “an instance” of a report to the receiving organization and represents a snapshot in time of data (financial or otherwise) that conforms to the applied taxonomy's rules and nomenclature. For example, if the receiving organization is the SEC, the XBRL instance document may be a quarterly financial statement. The XBRL instance document may provide amounts of money associated with XBRL tags. For example, the quarterly financial statement may have an XBRL tag of “<Revenue>” and the associated amount of money may be 23,000,000. The information in the XBRL instance documents may be used for reporting, compliance or other actions. To create the XBRL instance document, the business, in embodiment, maps the XBRL tags in the XBRL taxonomy with business information, for example, a general ledger.
In embodiments, a business associates the XBRL taxonomy tags with portions of the business's information to create a design template. For purposes of explanation, the business information hereinafter described will be the general ledger of the business' accounting system. However, in other embodiments, other business information, for example, human resources information, marketing information, etc., is mapped. A general ledger may be a Microsoft® Excel Spreadsheet or another ledger from an accounting system such as Microsoft® Dynamics GP.
A design template, in embodiments, is a template of the XBRL instance document that contains the associations between the general ledger and the XBRL taxonomy. The design template, in other embodiments, may include one or more other items of information, including, but not limited to, footnotes, notes or comments, formatting, titles, or display properties. In embodiments, the business associate maps the XBRL taxonomy to the general ledger when creating the design template. The business associate may create the design template every time an XBRL instance document is required or once for several instances of an XBRL document. Regardless, the business associate maps the XBRL tags to portions of or items of information in the general ledger.
In further embodiments, other information is used in the mapping process. For example, one or more formulas allow the XBRL instance document to incorporate information from one or more other information sources beyond the general ledger. This information may allow data in the XBRL instance document to be corrected or combined with other information. Combining or correcting information using other sources expands the current capabilities of XBRL functionality and allows more than a one-to-one mapping of taxonomy tags and data.
An embodiment of a system 100 with a user interface 102 allowing a business associate or user to map taxonomy tags to a general ledger is shown in
In embodiments, a user creates a row in the design template 106 to associate a portion of financial data, or row, in the general ledger with a taxonomy tag in the XBRL taxonomy. A user may create one or more rows in the design template 106. For example, row 118 may associate the “Accounts Receivable USA” row in the general ledger (represented in column 120) with the “Accounts Receivable” taxonomy tag (represented in column 122). The taxonomy tag 124 may be automatically matched to and associated with the account designation 126 that is imported from the general ledger.
A user, in embodiments, chooses a user interface device to automatically match or associate a taxonomy tag 124 with the account designation 126. For example, the user may choose menu option 128 to find a taxonomy tag match in the XBRL taxonomy with the account designation 126. In embodiments, another user interface element or device, for example, pop-up menu 130, is displayed that shows one or more “near” matches from which a user may choose. Embodiments of how “near” or “close” matches are determined is explained in more detail in conjunction with
In other embodiments, the closest match is automatically inserted into the “XBRL Designation” column 122. For example, the system 100 matches the account type “Accounts Receivable USA” 126 with the taxonomy tag “Accounts Receivable” 124 and inserts the taxonomy tag 124 into the “XBRL Designation” column 122 for the row 118. The taxonomy tag 124 is displayed as mapped to the portion of financial data 126 in a view of a design template 106. The taxonomy tag 124 is associated with the portion of the financial data 126 in the design template 106. In this way, the user need not select a match but can allow the system 100 to match the taxonomy tag with the account type in the general ledger.
Further embodiments allow a user to have the system 100 match all the accounts in the design template 106 with a taxonomy tag. For example, the user chooses a user interface element, such as the “Find All” menu option 138 to have all accounts matched with taxonomy tags. The system 100, in embodiments, then matches each row value having an account type in column 120 with a taxonomy tag and inserts the taxonomy tags in column 122 for each row. For example, the system 100 inserts tags 124 and 140 into the design template 106. Thus, a user need not select any taxonomy tags for any portion of the financial data in the general ledger. In further embodiments, a user may manually edit any mismatched taxonomy tags. In other embodiments, a preview of the tag matching is provided to the user. and the user may select to accept the automatically matched tags. In contrast, in an alternative embodiment, a user may undo one or more of the automatically matched tags after the tags have been matched.
A system 200 for automatically associating or mapping taxonomy tags with portions of financial data and generating XBRL instance documents is shown in
In embodiments, the system 200 comprises a designer application component 204 and a processing engine component 212. The designer application component 204, in embodiments, receives selections for and imports an XBRL taxonomy 202 and financial data, for example, general ledger 206. In further embodiments, the designer application component 204 receives a selection 208 to map automatically a taxonomy tag to a portion of the financial data, for example, a row in the general ledger 206. The designer application 204, in embodiments, outputs a design template 210, which may be sent to the processing engine 212 and/or the user interface 222 for viewing by the user. The user interface 222 may be similar or the same as the user interface 102 shown in
The processing engine 212, in embodiments, receives the design template 210 and imports financial data, for example, from the general ledger 206, to associate the design template 210 with the financial data 206 and to generate an XBRL instance document 214. In embodiments, the XBRL instance document 214 is sent to a viewer 220 to provide a view of the XBRL instance document 214 in the user interface 222. In further embodiments, the XBRL instance document 214 is sent to a third party 224 for importation and processing. For example, the XBRL instance document 214 is a financial reporting that is sent to the IRS for tax purposes.
In alternative embodiments, a parser 216 imports the XBRL taxonomy 202 and parses the XBRL taxonomy 202. The parsed XBRL taxonomy forms an XBRL taxonomy document object model (DOM) 218. An XBRL taxonomy DOM 218 is a representation of the XBRL taxonomy 202 where the different elements of the XBRL taxonomy 202 are represented by separate software objects (also referred to as “objects”). For example, each taxonomy tag in the XBRL taxonomy 202 is represented by a software object in the XBRL taxonomy DOM 218. The XBRL taxonomy DOM 218 is further explained in conjunction with
The parser can provide the XBRL taxonomy DOM 218 to the designer application component 204, which may import the XBRL taxonomy DOM 218 to create the design template 210. The designer application component 204, in embodiments, traverses the XBRL taxonomy DOM 218 to compare one or more attributes of the DOM objects to the selected portion of the financial data. For example, the taxonomy tag name may be an attribute of the DOM object and compared to a descriptor of the financial data, for example, an account title. The designer application component 204 may have one or more components that accomplish the generation of the design template 210.
An embodiment of a system 300 comprising a designer application 302 is shown in
The designer application 302, in embodiments, includes a report layer 304. The report layer 304 may contain one or more subcomponents that execute to generate portions of the XBRL design template 328. In embodiments, the report layer 304 includes one or more of, but is not limited to, a row editor 306, a column editor 308, a report editor 310, a company editor 332, and a tree editor 312.
The column editor 308 can communicate with the user interface 322 to receive information related to the columns, for example, column 142 (
The row editor 306, and, in embodiments, the report editor 310, the company editor 332, the column editor 308, and/or the tree editor 312, can import the XBRL taxonomy 314 and the general ledger 326 to generate and edit the rows in the XBRL design template 328. In embodiments, the row editor 306 automatically maps XBRL taxonomy tags in the XBRL taxonomy 314 with rows in the general ledger 326. In embodiments, mapping is as described in conjunction with
In one embodiment, the row editor 306 includes a picker 332, also referred to as tag picker, which may be an element in the user interface 322 for receiving selections from the user to find matches between the XBRL taxonomy tags in the XBRL taxonomy 314 and the rows in the general ledger 326. The picker may be a menu, for example, menu 114 (
In alternative embodiments, the system 300 also includes a taxonomy parser 316. In embodiments, the taxonomy parser 316 parses the XBRL taxonomy 314 similarly to the process explained in conjunction with
In embodiments, the XBRL taxonomy DOM 318 is a tree structure object model. A first object may be a parent to one or more other objects. A parent object is a higher order object to its children objects. A representation of a simple hierarchical XBRL taxonomy DOM 334 is shown in
A general ledger 326 may be provided to the report layer 304 to create the XBRL design template 328. In embodiments, the system may store two or more general ledgers in one or more general ledger datastores 324. The user may choose a general ledger 326 to create the XBRL design template 328.
In further embodiments, the system 300 may create one or more XBRL design templates, such as XBRL design template 328. In embodiments, the XBRL design templates are stored in an XBRL design template datastore 330. When a processing engine 212 (
An embodiment of a method 400 for automatically matching or mapping a taxonomy tag with a portion of financial data is shown in
Provide operation 402 provides an XBRL taxonomy. In an embodiment, a user selects, using a user interface 102 (
Provide operation 404 provides financial data. In alternative embodiments, provide operation 404 occurs before provide operation 402. Financial data may include a general ledger, for example, general ledger 326 (
In embodiments, parse operation 405 parses a taxonomy. In an embodiment, a taxonomy parser 316 (
In embodiments, receive operation 406 receives a selection to find a match between a portion of financial data and a taxonomy tag. A user, in embodiments, selects a user interface element, such as menu selection 128 (
Match operation 408 matches an item in the financial data with an item in the XBRL taxonomy. In embodiments, a row editor 306 (
In one embodiment, the match algorithm may match the exact and full taxonomy tag with the exact and full title of the account. Thus, in embodiments, the row editor 306 (
In an alternative embodiment, the row editor 306 (
In still another embodiment, the row editor 306 (
Display operation 410 displays the item in the XBRL taxonomy as mapped with the item of financial data. In embodiments, a viewer 220 (
An embodiment of a method 500 for automatically matching an XBRL taxonomy tag to a portion of financial information is shown in
Match operation 502 matches a title in the general ledger to a title of an XBRL taxonomy. In an embodiment, the row editor 306 (
Determine operation 504 determines if the title attribute of more than one XBRL taxonomy DOM 318 object matches the row in the general ledger 326 (
Match operation 506 matches one or more items of other information in the XBRL DOM. For example, if the first match operation 502 yielded four matches, one or more other items of information are compared against the four matches. The row editor 306 (
In one embodiment, the matches contain more than one taxonomy tag but no final match can be made. In these situations, the final set of matching taxonomy tags may be presented to the user. The user can then choose which taxonomy tag to map to the data from the general ledger.
In an alternative embodiment, an algorithm may produce several matches. For example, the matches may be weighted by percentage of characters in the general ledger data matching a taxonomy tag. All matches above a certain threshold, for example, 60%, may be considered as matching. In another embodiment, the algorithm includes a statistical threshold, for example, the match is certain to a 95% confidence interval. The several matches may then be ranked by percentage or other value of relation to the general ledger data. The match with the highest rank for one or more attributes may be designated as the match according to the algorithm.
With reference to
In its most basic configuration, computer system 600 typically includes at least one processing unit 602 and system memory 604. In embodiments, the designer application 204 (
Additionally, device 600 may also have additional features/functionality. For example, device 600 includes additional storage (removable and/or non-removable) including, but not limited to, magnetic or optical disks or tape. Such additional storage is illustrated in
Memory 604, removable storage 608, and non-removable storage 610 are all examples of computer storage media. Computer storage media includes, but is not limited to, RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disks (DVD) or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage, other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which is used to store the desired information, for example, the design template 328 (
Device 600 may also contain communications connection(s) 612 that allow the device to communicate with other devices. In embodiments, the communication connections 612 are used to send and/or receive data, for example, the XBRL taxonomies 314 (
In embodiments, device 600 includes a graphical user interface that includes input devices 614 and output devices 616. Data selections for the XBRL taxonomy 202 (
Computer system 600 typically includes at least some form of computer readable media. Computer readable media can be any available media that can be accessed by processing unit 602. By way of example, and not limitation, computer readable media comprise computer storage media. Software system 100 (
Although the embodiments have been described in language specific to structural features, methodological acts, and computer-readable media containing such acts, it is to be understood that the possible embodiments, as defined in the appended claims, are not necessarily limited to the specific structure, acts, or media described. One skilled in the art will recognize other embodiments or improvements that are within the scope and spirit of the present invention. Therefore, the specific structure, acts, or media are disclosed only as illustrative embodiments. The invention is defined by the appended claims.
Claims
1. In a computer system having a graphical user interface including a display and a user interface selection device, a method defined in mapping an XBRL tag to a portion of financial data, the method comprising:
- receiving a selection of an XBRL taxonomy;
- receiving a selection of financial data;
- receiving selection to map automatically a taxonomy tag to a portion of the financial data; and
- displaying the taxonomy tag automatically mapped to the portion of financial data.
2. The method defined in claim 1, further comprising:
- parsing the XBRL taxonomy into an XBRL taxonomy document object model; and
- traversing the XBRL taxonomy document object model to match the taxonomy tag with the portion of the financial data.
3. The method defined in claim 2, further comprising:
- determining an attribute of one or more XBRL taxonomy document objects to match with the portion of financial data; and
- discarding other attribute data that does not apply to the match.
4. The method defined in claim 3, wherein traversing the XBRL taxonomy document comprises:
- comparing a descriptor in the financial data with an attribute of a first object in the XBRL taxonomy document object model; and
- comparing the descriptor in the financial data with the attribute of a second object in the XBRL taxonomy document object model.
5. The method defined in claim 4, wherein the first object is a higher order object and further comprising:
- comparing a second descriptor in the financial data with a second attribute of a first object in the XBRL taxonomy document object model; and
- comparing the second descriptor in the financial data with the second attribute of a second object in the XBRL taxonomy document object model to further refine a search.
6. The method defined in claim 4, wherein the taxonomy tag is mapped after a first successful comparison of an attribute of an object in the XBRL taxonomy document object model to the descriptor in the financial data.
7. The method defined in claim 1, wherein the taxonomy tag is displayed as mapped to the portion of financial data in a view of a design template.
8. The method defined in claim 7, wherein the taxonomy tag is associated with the portion of the financial data in the design template and the associations are checked for correctness.
9. The method defined in claim 7, further comprising:
- creating an XBRL instance document from the design template and the financial data; and
- providing a view of the XBRL instance document.
10. A computer storage medium having computer-executable components stored thereon, the computer executable component executable in a computer system for mapping an XBRL taxonomy tag to a portion of financial data, the components comprising;
- a tag picker, the tag picker receiving a selection from a user interface to match the portion of the financial data with the XBRL taxonomy tag; and
- a designer application in communication with the tag picker, the designer application importing a taxonomy and a general ledger and exporting a design template, the designer application comprising: a row editor in communication with a user interface, the row editor, responsive to the selection from the user interface, the row editor automatically matching the one or more XBRL taxonomy tag taxonomy tags to a portion of financial data in the general ledger, the row editor associating the taxonomy XBRL tag with the portion of financial data in the design template.
11. The components defined in claim 10, wherein the designer application imports an XBRL taxonomy document object model.
12. The components defined in claim 11, further comprising:
- a taxonomy parser in communication with the designer application, the taxonomy parser importing the XBRL taxonomy and parsing the XBRL taxonomy into an XBRL taxonomy document object model, the taxonomy parser providing the XBRL taxonomy document object model to the row editor.
13. The components defined in claim 10, further comprising:
- a column editor in communication with a user interface, the column editor receiving information related to the columns of a general ledger;
- a report editor in communication with a user interface, the report editor receiving selections regarding content of an XBRL instance document; and
- a tree editor in communication with a user interface, the tree editor providing information about a hierarchical view of the XBRL taxonomy.
14. The components defined in claim 13, wherein the designer application comprises one of a group consisting of the row editor, the column editor, the report editor, a company editor, and a tree editor.
15. The components defined in claim 10, further comprising:
- a processing engine in communication with the designer application, the processing engine matching the design template with the financial data, the processing engine providing an XBRL instance document, the processing engine matching the design template with the financial data by finding a percentage of the same characters in both the design template and the financial data.
16. The components defined in claim 10, further comprising:
- a viewer in communication with the processing engine, the viewer providing a display of the XBRL instance document.
17. A method executable in a computer system for mapping an XBRL tag to a portion of financial data, the method comprising:
- providing an XBRL taxonomy;
- parsing the XBRL taxonomy to create an XBRL taxonomy document object model;
- providing a general ledger;
- receiving a selection of a row in the general ledger to match to an XBRL taxonomy tag in the XBRL taxonomy;
- traversing the XBRL taxonomy document object model to compare a title of a row in the general ledger with a title attribute of one or more objects in the XBRL taxonomy document object model;
- associating the row in the general ledger and the XBRL taxonomy tag of the object that has the title attribute that compares to the title of the row in the general ledger; and
- providing an XBRL design template having at least one associated XBRL taxonomy tag and row of the general ledger.
18. The method as defined in claim 17, further comprising:
- determining if the title attribute of more than one object in the XBRL taxonomy document object model compares to the row in the general ledger;
- if the title of more than one object in the XBRL taxonomy document object model does not compare to the row in the general ledger, associating the row in the general ledger and the XBRL taxonomy tag of the object that has the title attribute that compares to the title of the row in the general ledger; and
- if the title of more than one object in the XBRL taxonomy document object model does compare to the row in the general ledger, comparing one or more other items of information in the general ledger with one or more other attributes of a least one object in the XBRL taxonomy document object model.
19. The method as defined in claim 17, further comprising:
- storing the XBRL design template;
- creating an XBRL instance document from the XBRL design template and the general ledger; and
- repeating, at a second time, the creation of an XBRL instance document from the XBRL design template and updated data in the general ledger.
20. The method as defined in claim 17, wherein the step of associating the row in the general ledger and the XBRL taxonomy tag of the object comprises:
- providing two or more selections of XBRL taxonomy tags that compare to the title of the row in the general ledger;
- receiving a selection of one of the XBRL taxonomy tags; and
- associating the selected XBRL taxonomy tag with the row in the general ledger.
Type: Application
Filed: Jun 29, 2007
Publication Date: Jan 1, 2009
Patent Grant number: 8176003
Applicant: Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA)
Inventors: Michael Allen Bush (Highlands Ranch, CO), Daniel Barnett (Centennial, CO), Jeffrey B. Cutting (Aurora, CO), Angela Selman (Centennial, CO)
Application Number: 11/771,622
International Classification: G06F 7/06 (20060101); G06F 17/30 (20060101);